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44 



LECTURE 

How God Made the Soil Fertile" 




By ROBERT S. SEEDS 

BIRMINGHAM, PA. 
1908 



This book will be sent, 
postpaid, to any address on 
receipt of 25 cents. 

r. s. SEEDS 

BIRMINGHAM, PA. 



"HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE" 



Restoration of the Soil by Addition of 
Vegetable Matter 

ik T Chautauquas last summer, and at Farmers' Institutes, 

/% many people came to me at the close of my lectures and 

I ^ asked if I had my soil talk in book form, — hence the 

writing of this book. My effort in writing this small book 

shall be to write it as I have been talking it, as nearly as possible. 

Life is a funny proposition. Fifteen years ago, I sold out a good 
business in Tyrone City, Pa. (few better in the town), and went 
down to the adjoining county — Huntingdon — and bought an old 
worn-out, run-down and abandoned farm. Windows were nailed 
up, roofs letting in the rain, gates going without hinges, fences had 
disappeared, and there had not been a farmer on it for seven years, 
because they could not find a man who would farm it. 

The land was so poor, that you could not raise anything, not even 
a disturbance; could not raise an umbrella on it; sometimes I found 
difficulty in raising my voice on it. It was the most desolate-looking 
place in my county. 

My friends said I was the biggest fool on earth, and that I ought 
to have a guardian appointed over me; and, the day we moved down 
on the farm, Mrs. Seeds cried. 

I began to haul stable manure from Tyrone City, two and one- 
half miles away, and I did not get many acres covered until that 
lead pencil (we know what it costs, but you cannot tell what it is 
worth) told me it was costing me $20 per acre to cover it. Could 
not stand that; so, as I lived in the greatest lime-stone region in 
the state, I thought I would lime it. But I did not get many acres cov- 
ered until I found out it was costing me $10 to $15 per acre to lime 
it, and, as I did not have a huge bank account or a rich father-in- 
law to lean up against, I made up my mind I could not stand it; 
so, about that time I was burning midnight oil, studying the soil. 
There are two things I have loved well enough to sit up until twelve 
o'clock at night and burn midnight oil with, — the one was Mrs. 
Seeds and the other was that old farm, — and I do not begrudge 
the time I spent with either of them. 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 



If I had not loved that old farm and sat up with it until twelve 
o'clock at night, I never would have seen the boys take $60 per acre 
off it, or have sold the soil at $1.50 per bushel. 

I want to say right here, if any one reading this book has an 
occupation or position he does not like or love, he has my sympathy 
from the bottom of my heart. Oh, what a pleasure to do something 
or work at something we love! So, it was because I loved to do it 
that I burned midnight oil, studying the soil. 

Take two young men; start them out in life. The one loves his 
business; the other does not. The one will burn midnight oil; the 
other will not. The one is a success; the other is a failure; and there 
is nothing down at the bottom of it but love. So, in burning this 
midnight oil, I found out that in the first foot of that old wornout 
farm there was enough of plant food to last from one hundred to one 
thousand years; but it was locked up and the plants could not get it. 
I also found out that three-fourths of the air was nitrogen, that was 
costing me at that time about fourteen cents per pound in the com- 
mercial fertilizer sack. When I found this out, I said to myself, 
"The Lord is unjust to have all this plant food under my feet and 
over my head, and have it locked up so that I cannot get it, nor the 
plants that I am trying to grow." But the longer I thought about 
it, the more I came to the conclusion that the Lord does not make 
many mistakes, and I would sooner have the Lord manage the 
weather in my community than any neighbor I have; for if the Lord 
did not lock up this plant food what would we do? We would use 
up every bit of it, haul down the very skies and use it, and starve 
the poor fellow to death who is coming after us. But the Lord says, 
"You shall not do it;" so he locks it up, and neither you, I, nor 
any other man can get it, and use it in any other way than nature's 
way, and the way I am about to describe in this little book. 

Ages ago, this earth was solid rock. The rock began to disinte- 
grate and the soil began to form. Vegetation began to grow, and 
that was the starting place in making soil fertile; and the more vege- 
tation a section of the earth produced, the richer that portion became; 
hence the prairie was richer than the forests of the East, because 
the surface of the earth got more vegetation from the grasses than 
where the forests stood. 

The Lord made all the acres of the land fertile from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, and gave it to man to live upon, to prosper, and be 
happy. In doing so, he never hauled a wagon-load of manure or 
a load of lime, nor bought a ton of fertilizer, — and how did he do it ? 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 



He did it with vegetable matter; and I thought that if the Lord could 
do it, I could do it. This sounds a little conceity, but I mean it. 

I have no use for a man who sits around whittling a store box, 
waiting for the Lord to turn something up for him; and the man 
who crops his land ignorantly until he gets it so he cannot raise 
anything on it, and expects to sit on his front porch and have the 
Almighty give him two hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre, 
will sit there a long time. If you do not believe it, try him once. 

If the Lord could do it with vegetable matter, I could do it. 
I knew he created plants that have the power to pull the nitrogen 
out of the air and put it in little sacks on their roots, and other plants 
that have the power to pump up the potash and phosphoric acid 
from the subsoil. 

The first plant I used was the crimson clover, and, when I began 
to use it, they all said it would not grow in Pennsylvania on the 
foot-hills of the Allegheny mountains, but that it was a plant for the 
South. But I sent to Michigan and New York state and got bulletins 
on the crimson clover, and found that they were not only raising the 
plant, but producing the seed; so, instead of going South for the seed, 
I sent to Michigan for it. I would sow it in my corn field in front 
of the cultivator the last time I worked the corn, and would scratch 
other fields with the spring-tooth harrow in the spring, when we had 
heat and moisture, and sow it there. The growth of vegetable matter 
I would get in my corn field I would plow down the next May or 
June, just before the vitality left the stock to mature the seed in the 
head when the sap began to get sticky, so I would not sour the ground, 
and put that field to wheat in the fall. Then I would take another 
field that was covered with sorrel and goldenrod, plow it and culti- 
vate it; for 1 believed then, as I do now, that cultivation released 
and made available some of that great store of plant food that was 
locked up. I would put that field to oats with commercial fertilizer 
in the drill. Did not get much vegetable matter at first. 

This was my rotation until I got my farm covered with grass; 
and I did not want to take a grass field for oats, but wanted my 
cornstalks for oats. When I wanted my cornstalk field- for oats, 
and had to plow the field in the fall or early spring, the crimson 
clover plant did not seem to be what I wanted, as it did not produce 
as many tons of vegetable matter to the acre as I seemed to crave. 

The next spring I sent to Clearfield county, Pa., bought some 
buckwheat, and got some purple-top strap-leaf turnip seed and 
crimson clover seed. When I worked my corn the last time that 



10 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

season, I sowed in front of the cultivator the first strip in the field 
with the buckwheat, the next strip with purple-top strap-leaf turnip 
and crimson clover mixed, and the rest of the field with crimson 
clover. 

The buckwheat did not seem to make much vegetable matter, 
and it seemed to disappear the first frost. We had better corn where 
we had the turnips and crimson clover mixed. It seemed to shade 
the ground and help hold the moisture. The ground under it was 
dark brown, and, in some places, moldy on the top. 

I used to sell agricultural implements, and. in traveling through 
the country, I used to see good spots in oat fields. I was told that they 
were caused by pulling the turnips in the fall in the corn field, throw- 
ing them in piles, then cutting the tops off and letting them lie there, 
while the turnips were taken to the barn. The tops rotting and plowed 
down caused the good spots in oats, — hence my going for turnip 
seed. 

We put the corn and fodder into the barn. The field was then 
plowed for oats, and you could see that belt through the middle of 
the oat field where turnips and crimson clover was, as far as you 
could see the field. The oats was cut, put in the barn, and the field 
plowed for wheat; and two weeks after the field was plowed and har- 
rowed, you could see that belt through the middle of the plowed 
field as far as you could see the field. This was easy, if you stop to 
think. I said the oats was better there than at any other place in the 
field; hence it was riper there than elsewhere in the field, and, in cut- 
ting it with the binder, it shelled more than where it was greener; 
so, the belt that could be so plainly seen was caused by the growing 
of the young oats. 

Still, I was not satisfied with the purple-top strap-leaf turnip, 
for it grew on top of the ground. I wanted a plant with a longer root, — 
one that would go down into the subsoil below the furrow after the 
potash and phosphoric acid. I took all the seed catalogues I had 
on that famous desk that is known over the country, and went 
through them to find a plant that I could produce in a short time, 
and that had a long root. I had to see the picture of it, for I could 
not tell by the name of it what it would be like. 

When I was going through Shumway's (Rockford, 111.) catalogue, 
I came across the picture of the cowhorn turnip, and I saw it had a 
long root, something like a cow's horn, and one that would go down 
into the subsoil below the plow. 

That year I sent to Shumway and got cowhorn turnip seed; sent 



12 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

to Michigan and got crimson clover seed; mixed them together, and 
sowed in the corn field in front of the cultivator the last time we worked 
the corn. This was the start of all the controversy about cowhorn 
turnip. 

That year, on the sixth of August, I was invited down to Perry 
county, Pa., to talk at a farmers' picnic. The day before (August 5th) 
I went into my corn field, dug up some crimson clover plants and 
cowhorn turnip plants, and I took them with me to that farmers' 
meeting, and there, before about two thousand farmers, I laid on 
my rule crimson clover roots six inches long, and cowhorn turnip 
roots nine inches long. The point I want to make is this: inside of 
eight weeks, these roots were down in the subsoil after the potash 
and phosphoric acid, — the only way to get it. 

This grew on until November 21, 1899. After the corn and fodder 
were put in the barn, we pulled the plow in the field, to turn under 
this growth of vegetable matter, and found we were turning under 
cowhorn turnips four feet long. When I make this assertion I see 
people in the audience putting their heads together, and I often 
wonder what they are saying to one another. Once a man whistled 
when I made this assertion; but, after I make this assertion, I modify 
it by saying, "that is, tops and all;" but the turnips proper were 
anywhere from eighteen inches to two feet long; and this I hang right 
on to, as we took a photograph of the plow turning them under, — 
the picture of which is in the book. 

We plowed all the field except a strip about forty feet wide, 
left at the request of the Agricultural Department of Pennsylvania, 
and that we plowed in the spring; but with the eye we could never 
detect any difference. Another kind of winter might have made a 
difference. 

I will venture to say that was the funniest looking field you ever 
saw when it was plowed; and, if you and some one had been driving 
along the road at my place, you would have turned to the man at 
your side and said: "Here is where that man Seeds, who talks on 
farming, lives. There is a sample of his plowing." Sometimes the 
plow would turn the turnips under; sometimes cut them off; and 
sometimes the plow would push one of those big turnips up out of 
the ground about eight or ten inches, and there it would stand; and 
the field looked as though we had gone in there and plowed down a 
lot of Indians, heels foremost, and their heads and feathers were 
sticking out of the ground. 

That January we had a ground thaw, and I put on a pair of 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 15 

rubber boots and waded out to see the field; and I could smell it 
long before I got to it. 

The next spring, when we harrowed the field for oats, where one 
of those turnips that was pushed up out of the ground had frozen 
and decayed there was a dark brown spot; that is the milk in the 
cocoanut — decayed vegetable matter, — that which turns to humus, 
holds the moisure and helps unlock the plant food that is locked up 
and unavailable in the soil. 

I am no chemist, nothing but an ordinary farmer, but my other 
habits are good. From the most careful figuring I could do, and from 
the best authorities I could find, I was plowing down twenty dollars' 
worth of nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid to the acre, — and 
the cost to me was but eighty cents. Later, when I used the cowhorn 
turnip and dwarf Essex rape, I brought the cost down to fifty-five 
cents per acre. 

That field was sown broadcast to oats, put in with the harrow 
without any commercial fertilizer or barnyard manure, for the first 
time on that old worn-out farm, in one of the driest seasons we ever 
had in central Pennsylvania; and, when the binder was cutting that 
oats, we had a photograph taken of it. A cut of the field is shown in 
the book. 

The same season, on the fourth day of June, we took a photo- 
graph of a red clover field that was twenty-seven inches high — the 
result of moisture and plant food created and released with vegetable 
matter and humus. We show a cut of the field. 

It has been shown that soil that is filled with decayed vegetable 
matter and humus, from one crop of crimson clover plowed down, 
will hold fifty tons more water to the acre than soil that is not. If 
you figure how much water you must have to raise a crop of corn, 
oats, potatoes, hay, etc., you will see the value of land that has the 
power to hold water. 

We had a farmer in Pennsylvania who got his farm into such a 
condition that he said spring rains were a nuisance. 

I have watched the soil until I make this assertion: that soil that 
is filled with decayed vegetable matter and humus is warmer in the 
winter-time, cooler in summer-time, wetter in dry weather, and 
drier in wet weather. 

At Somerset, Pa., on December 4, 1907, when I made this asser- 
tion, men by the dozen immediately opposed my statement, by say- 
ing that such land could not be drier in wet weather. 

Never was I driven into a closer corner. I thought and thought, 



16 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

in order to find an illustration that would make my idea clear to 
them, and that would "back up" my assertion. At last I selected 
two of the leaders in the opposition, and put one of the following 
questions to each: I asked the first man to suppose a level ten-acre 
field, the one half of which had had vegetable matter and humus 
worked into it, and the other half of which had been left untreated. 
This being done, and the field plowed, I asked him to suppose, 
further, that rain should fall upon the whole field from Monday 
until Friday, and that on that day he should take some other man 
to an elevated place and ask him to say which half of the field was 
the drier. I then asked him to tell me what this other man's reply 
was likely to be. He hung his head a moment, and then confessed 
that in his opinion the man would select that half which had had the 
vegetable matter and humus worked into it. I then turned to the 
other leader in the audience, and spoke to him as follows : " If you 
take two three-gallon buckets, and put two gallons of soil filled with 
vegetable matter and humus into one of them, and two gallons of 
soil devoid of it into the other, then pour one gallon of water into each 
bucket, which lot of soil would appear to be the drier?" He paused, 
then said that the soil having vegetable matter and humus in it 
would be the drier. The reply of either could not have been otherwise, 
and, therefore, proved my assertion. 

Every plant needs the balanced ration as well as the cow that 
gives milk or the hen that lays eggs. The dairyman will go into the 
stable, look the cows in the face, and say, " I will make you give milk," 
and puts a balanced ration in their trough for that purpose. A chicken 
man will figure out what it takes to make an egg, make the conditions 
all right, and give the old American hen the material to make an 
egg out of, and she's just got to lay or bust. These men have been 
going up and down the land, talking a balanced ration for a cow, hen, 
etc., but who ever heard any one talking a balanced ration for a plant, 
till "Bob" Seeds began it some years ago. No man can put a bal- 
anced ration in a commercial fertilizer sack, like that released by 
nature. If all farmers were not trying to balance that ration, they 
would all use the same brand of fertilizer; and thousands of dollars 
are wasted every year in the eastern TJnited States by the farmers 
trying to balance that ration. 

This last year, 1907, 1 have been lecturing in the state of Nebraska, 
and have learned that where they had used nitrogen, potash and 
phosphoric acid, separately, on wheat, the nitrogen showed by far 
the best. Hence, while I know that any vegetable matter will help 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 17 

the soil, I believe that crimson clover, red clover, sweet clover, and 
alsike would be better for that soil than turnips, rape or rye; because 
it would gather the nitrogen from the air, and balance their soil 
ration quicker, that they have unbalanced by raising corn. 

I believe the nitrogen the western farmer has was given him with 
nature's blanket, which I have so often talked about, and will treat 
more fully in another chapter; and the farmer who watches this 
blanket and helps nature will have nature help him in return. 

I can take pure corn meal and kill little pigs with it. I can get a 
man's fattening hogs in such a condition with pure corn meal that 
he will have to kill them to save their lives. 

I have taken nitrate of soda and gone into my oat field and kept 
every grain out of the oat head by unbalancing the ration. I have 
gone into my timothy field and made lots of hay with nitrate of soda, 
and the query to me is, "Why does a leguminous plant not care 
for nor use nitrate of soda, when it is a nitrogen-gathering plant?" 

I was talking along the line of the blanket in Bucks county, 
Pennsylvania, a few winters ago, when a farmer got up and said 
he had covered one-half a field of grass with barnyard manure and 
the other half with pure clean straw. The straw-covered part was 
just as fertile when plowed and cropped as where he put the barn- 
yard manure. I said, "Hold on, you are not telling all the story;" 
and when I got him into details he said they had threshed the wheat 
in the field and he hauled the straw from thresher in July and cov- 
ered one-half of the grass field, and the next winter he covered the 
other half of the field with barnyard manure. I said "That will do." 
The truth was,. he covered one-half of his grass field with straw in 
July, and it was a blanket holding the moisture when he had the 
heat. It benefited the mechanical conditions of the soil, disintegrated 
the soil, and unlocked some of that plant food that I talked about 
being locked up a while ago, and equaled the plant food in barnyard 
manure put on in winter-time when there was no heat. 

After I was through talking in Crawford county, Pennsylvania, 
a few years ago, a man got up and said he manured a potato patch 
in a corner of the field he was going to put corn in. Something 
happened so that he had to put another field to corn, and the field 
with the manured potato patch was moved that year. The next 
spring that field went to corn, and after he had gotten his oats in 
and went to plow the field in question, for corn, it began to get dry, 
and he could scarcely get the field plowed; but, in plowing the field, 
when he came to the patch that was manured the year before, the 



18 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

plow would go right through, because there was more moisture 
there than in the rest of the field. 

People sometimes look at me when I say that the floods around 
Pittsburg and on the Ohio river are growing worse and more destruc- 
tive every decade, because as the forests of western Pennsylvania 
and eastern Ohio are removed, and the farmers work the vegetable 
matter and humus out of the soil, the water-holding power is gone. 
Put a forest over western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, and the 
vegetable matter and humus back in the soil, and you cannot have 
a flood at Pittsburg, nor will you have low water. 

When I was at Clarinda, Iowa, driving out through the country, 
I noticed, on one side of the road, that the corn was a much greener 
color than that on the other side. One field had been cropped in 
corn much oftener than the other, thus drawing on the store and 
taking out the nitrogen of the soil, until the corn was getting to be 
of a yellow color. In many places through Missouri, Nebraska, 
Iowa, and Illinois, I noticed that the high places, or ridges, through 
the fields, were beginning to produce yellow-looking corn, while, 
at the base of this hill or ridge, the corn was of a dark green color. 
The season of 1907 was one of the wettest in many years. I crossed 
and re-crossed the Missouri and Mississippi rivers many times, 
in attending Chautauquas, from June 15th to September 12th, 
and I believe that as much decayed vegetable matter, humus and 
plant food went down those two rivers as the farmers in those sections 
used in raising their crops that year. This was not so before the 
prairie was broken. The more the vegetable matter and humus is 
lost from the soil, the more the water runs off; and, the more the 
water runs off, the more and the faster it takes the vegetable matter 
and humus. In other words, the poorer the soil gets, the faster it 
goes; hence, the high places in the fields show yellow-looking corn 
first. 

Listen to me. It is much easier to take care of it when you have 
it than to put it back after it is gone. 

I was agreeably surprised to find the farmers of the middle United 
States as much interested in the soil as anywhere I had been. 

Nature has her way of doing things, and they cannot be changed; 
and how can we expect to have nature help us when we are determined 
to be against her all the time ? 

When raising early potatoes for the early market when tops are 
green, we had to haul the tops off the patch. I hauled them on a 
poor knob in a grass field that was going to corn the next spring. 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 19 

Those tops lying there the balance of the summer, as a blanket 
holding the moisture when we had the heat, released enough of that 
plant food that I talked about being locked up; so, when we were 
husking the corn in the fall, I stopped the men and called their 
attention to the length of the ears, the minute we struck the place 
where the tops had been put. 

In Pennsylvania in the last eight years, men in my audiences 
have put all kinds of arguments and questions against me on this 
subject. At Beyers, Chester county, winter of 1904 and 1905, I 
stepped out on a platform to talk on the soil. Before I got started, 
a man asked me a question, and the audience kept firing questions 
at me for one hour and a quarter; then I sat down, without saying 
one word of my lecture. 

At Selinsgrove, Snyder county, I had twenty-five or thirty men 
on my back at one time, and the chairman of the meeting offered 
any man a dollar who would corner me. I say this to show that I 
have fought out every inch of the ground on the platform and in 
the agricultural papers. They even went so far as to write to the 
largest agricultural institutions, and asked them to call me down 
for preaching a false doctrine. 

They have called me, many times, a liar. Once, when I went to 
Birmingham station to take the train to Tyrone, I sat down on the 
station steps. While waiting for the train, a man from Pittsburg 
who had been to Birmingham summer resort over Sunday, with his 
family, sat down beside me. He looked across the Juniata river at 
my place, and said, "What public institution is that over there?" 
I said, "That is no public institution, it is private property." He 
said, "Well, when we see so many whitewashed fences, we think 
it is a public institution." After a short pause, he looked across the 
river at my hills and said, " That must be awful poor land over there." 
I replied, "I don't know about that, but I do know that man is 
shipping the soil from that land all the over country at $1.50 per 
bushel." He hung his head a moment, then looked up and said to 
me, "Do you know, I am somewhat of a liar myself." There was 
nothing that I could have said that would have placed me back in 
that man's confidence; but, thank fortune, the day is here when the 
farmers all over the country are awakening up to the fact that their 
business is one that can be studied and improved, the same as many 
others. I speak from experience, when I say that the farmers' insti- 
tutes of Pennsylvania have painted many a farmhouse, put many 
a lawn around the home, put sunshine and books into the home, 



20 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

and made it a place that helped to keep the boys and girls on the 
farm, instead of being told by their father that farming was the mean- 
est business on earth. 

I am so pleased to see the people of the South and West so much 
interested in their calling, as well as many residents of the towns 
and cities. They are the people who forced me to put this lecture 
into book form. 

I am a vegetable-matter crank. If I were to go somewhere to 
preach the gospel in some church, I would get to talking vegetable 
matter before they could take up a collection. 

You can dig a well and throw the soil from two hundred feet 
under the surface out to the air and frost, heat and moisture, and 
nature will cover it with some kind of vegetable matter. So, my dear 
reader, it is not my particular way of making the soil fertile that I 
wish to impress upon you, but I want to point out that this is nature's 
way; and, while you may find a much better plan and more valuable 
plants than I have used, you cannot improve on nature's way. 

Some old farmers in my township winked their off-eye and said 
I would sour the ground plowing down green stuff, and would get 
that old farm worse than ever. Some of those men have since been 
elected assessors in my township, and put twenty-five dollars additional 
valuation per acre on my farm. 



The following is taken from Bulletin 61, June i, 1903, of the 
Delaware Experiment Station, Newark, Delaware: 

COWHORN TURNIP AS A SOIL IMPROVER 

TURNIP may well be called a potash plant, from the large 
amount of potash it contains. The yield is something as- 
tounding, being 11,297 pounds of tops and 20,522 pounds 
of roots, — a total of 31,819 pounds, or 15! tons of vegetable matter 
per acre. As shown in Table 1, this material contained 109.5 pounds 
of nitrogen, 142.6 pounds of potash, and 26 pounds of phosphoric 
acid.* 

Compared with crimson clover, the turnips contain 63 per cent 
more potash than does the clover, although they contain less nitrogen 
and phosphoric acid. The leaves are twice as rich, in potash, pound 
for pound, as are the roots. The objection to turnips is that the 
plants do not survive the winter. The foliage is killed by hard frosts 
early in the winter, and soon decomposes. The roots decay rapidly, 
except the skeleton of tough fibrous matter. It is quite probable 
that part of the plant food of this crop escapes from the bare soil 
when no other crop is put in with the turnips. It is economy, as well 
as good management, to use some winter-surviving crop like clover 
or vetch with them. If it is desired to use part of the roots for stock 
food, this may be done without impoverishing the land, if the stable 
manure is applied to the part from which the turnips are taken. 

Dwarf Essex rape (Brassica Napus, Linn). Seed sown at the 
rate of eleven and one-half pounds per acre gave a good stand. It 
had attained a height of from two to two and one-half feet by Novem- 
ber 1st (see Plate II-A). The rape is a vigorous grower and will 
stand considerable frost without much injury. During December, 
the plants "go down" and soon decay, except the roots, many of 
which live over winter. After mid-winter, the rape does not protect 
the ground much; it disintegrates and disappears. The old roots 
start growth early in the spring, and, where enough of them; survive 
the winter, will aid in taking up the surplus moisture from the soil 
early in the spring. They usually go to seed in April. About nine to 
ten pounds of seed are sufficient for an acre. Chemical analysis 

*At the present prices of nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid, the turnip and 
rape would be worth from twenty-five to thirty dollars per acre. 




Illustrations used oy permission of Delaware Experiment Station 

A. Rape nearly two feet high, November 15, 1901. B. Turnips one foot high, November 15, 1901 (original' 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 



23 



of rape shows it to be richer in total amount of plant food than 
crimson clover. It has nearly as much nitrogen, almost twice as 
much potash, and more than two-thirds as much phosphoric acid 
as has the clover. Compared with cowhorn turnips, it has 18 per cent 
more nitrogen, 13 per cent more potash, and 80 per cent more phos- 
phoric acid. (See Table I.) Its total yield per acre was 26,620 
pounds of green tops, and 864 pounds of air-dry roots. 

Mention was made of the amount of nitrogen, potash and phos- 
phoric acid which the various crops contained, and it is desirable to 
bring the figures together, so that they can be readily compared. 
The table on the following page was made up from Tables I and II 
in Bulletin 60, by Professor Penny, and shows the date of seeding, 
date of taking samples for analysis, the yield of the tops and roots 
per acre, and the amount of nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid, 
contained in the various crops. The roots were taken to a depth of 
twelve inches, and were necessarily dried before being weighed; 
the tops were weighed green. In comparing the amount of fertilizing 
ingredients of the different crops, the reader must not forget to take 
into consideration the differences of the total yields. 





S.& 






T3 P 


< 


|8! 


4) 

a 


U 


O cS 
in v 

n 


Seed sown 

Sample taken .... 

Lbs. green tops . . 
Lbs. air-dry roots . 


July 22 

Nov. 15 

11,297 

*20,522 


July 22 
Nov. 16 

26,620 
864 


July 22 
Nov. 22 

18,800 
413 


July 22 
Nov. 22 

6,909 
1,212 


July 22 
Nov. 20 

5.43° 
1,980 


July 22 
Nov. 19 

600 


July 22 
Nov. 7 

5,933 
394 


July 22 
Nov. 11 

io,952 
756 


Total yield — 
Lbs. nitrogen 

In tops 

In roots 


3!. 8l 9 

64.4 

4S-i 


27,484 

116. 2 
13.2 


19,213 

128.2 
6.2 


8,121 

69.8 
33- 2 


7,410 

54-8 
40.4 


*3,75° 

108.0 
13.2 


6,327 

65.2 
4-3 


11,708 

130.9 
9-3 


Total 

Lbs. potash 

In tops 

In roots 


109.5 

80.3 
62.3 


129.4 

148.2 
*3-i 


134-4 

84.0 
4.2 


103.0 

46-S 
9.9 


95- 2 

32.2 
9-5 


121. 2 

78.4 
7-i 


69-S 

47-4 
2.4 


14.02 

46.2 
r.8 


Total 

Lbs. phos. acid . . . 

In tops 

In roots 


142.6 

14-3 
n. 7 


161. 3 

41.8 
5-i 


88.2 j 56.4 

59.2 18.9 
2.0 10. 1 


41.7 

I3- 1 
8-5 


§5-5 

22.5 
4-7 


49.8 48.0 

16.6 37.8 
2.3 2.4 


Total 


26.0 


46.9 


61.2 i 29.0 


21.6 


27.2 


18.9 40.2 



*The turnip roots were weighed in their natural state, just after being dug; 
this is, therefore, not dry-air weight. 



24 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 



BALANCING THE RATION (Author) 
From Ohio Experiment Station 



Measure and Treatment 



Yard Manure: 
Untreated 

With gypsum, 40 lbs. to ton 

With kainit, 40 lbs. to ton 

With floats, 40 lbs. to ton 

With acid phosphate, 40 lbs. to ton 

Stall Manure: 
Untreated 

With gypsum, 40 lbs. to ton 

With kainit, 40 lbs. to ton \ 

With floats, 40 lbs. to ton 

With acid phosphate, 40 lbs. to ton 



The untreated stall manure has been worth eighty cents per ton 
more than the untreated yard manure, while the ton of phosphated 
manure has produced more than twice the increase recovered from 
the ton of untreated yard manure. 



Increase per acre 



Net value of 
increase 



Corn 


Wheat 


Hav 


Per 


Per ton 


bus. 


bus. 


lbs. 


acre 


manure 


16.0 


8.0 


698 


$17.22 


$2.15 


21.5 


"•3 


1,007 


22.12 


2.76 


22.7 


11. 1 


1,246 


22.13 


2.76 


22.9 


J3- 1 


1,605 


26.52 


3-3 1 


27.2 


14.7 


1,768 


29.22 


3- 6 5 


22.2 


9.9 


1,280 


23.70 


2.96 


25.8 


12.3 


i,3 10 


26.45 


3-3 1 


20. 9 


12.9 


2,079 


28.26 


3-53 


28.1 


15.2 


2,54i 


34-56 


4-3 2 


32.2 


15.8 


2,739 


3 6 -44 


4-55 



ANOTHER VOICE SAYING "AMEN " 

{Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1907) 

PLANTS ENRICH THE SOIL 

IT was not a power plant, but plant power, that made an island 
of the sea off Australia one of the most valuable grazing districts. 
It is King island.* Many years ago a Dutch ship was wrecked 
off the island coast and some of the sailors' mattresses were washed 
ashore. These were stuffed with what is known as Melilot grass, 
which, however, is really not a grass, but a yellow-flowered clover, 
known botanically as Melilotus officinalis. The plant thus washed 
ashore contained a fair amount of seed, and, in the course of years, 
these seeds took root and threw up tufts which gradually spread on 
the beach and inland. And now the result is that the fertilizing 
power of this little plant has transformed King island from a region 
of useless sand-dunes into one of the best grazing districts of the 
Australian commonwealth. This wonderful grass, sown on raw, 
white beach sand, in the course of five years has changed the character 
of the sand, until, at the end of that time, it has become a dark 
brown color, in some places almost black. Every year it is improving 
the value of the land. As is well known, the capacity of the clover 
and other leguminous plants to enrich the soil is due to the presence 
of bacteria, which enables the plants to take nitrogen directly from 
the atmosphere. 

*There has been some controversy as to which plant made this island fertile, but 
it was a leguminous plant and one that will grow and do good work on poor land. 




Top, or head, of Sweet Clove 
(Melilotus Alba) 

Illustration from United States 
Department of Agriculture, 
Washington, D. C. 



SWEET CLOVER (Melilotus alba) 

I HAVE been watching this plant for some time, and latelv I 
have been growing some of it. I will not attempt to write on 
it from experience, but I believe it is the plant that is the sal- 
vation or redemption of much of the worn-out lands, for it will grow 
on the poorest land you can find. I have seen it grow through sparks 
and cinders along the railroad track, on the cinder dump at an old 
furnace, and on piles of pebbles along the Conemaugh river bank, 
the soil all having been washed off the pebbles by the great Johns- 
town flood. 

It is a leguminous plant that will bring the nitrogen out of the 
air and will grow r where you cannot get other legumes to grow. 

I cannot see why this plant would not be a godsend to the aban- 
doned fields of the northern and southern states. If they would sow 
such fields with this clover and let it lie, they would surely get fertile. 
Some say to me, " Why, nothing will eat it." If this be true, then it is 
a greater plant than ever. Then no one will take it off the poor land 
and rob the field, and keep nature from restoring the soil. 

I am going to know more about this plant in the near future. 
Some say to me, "Be careful, it is a weed." I traveled from June to 
September, in 1907, and saw much sweet clover grow along the rail- 
road and the roadside, but I never found or saw a stock of it in a 
farmer's field, or in his way, and never found a man who had seen 
it" bother any one. It is the prettiest w 7 eed I ever saw, and there are 
some thin places on my farm that are going to get a sowing of it. 
I am going to try the white and yellow blossom the coming season. 

Did any one ever see a leguminous plant that w T as hard to kill or 
destroy? I should like to meet such a person. When sweet clover 
is young, it looks somewhat like alfalfa, has a whitish blossom, 
grows tall and branches out as it grows up, and gets woody as it 
matures. I show a cut, or picture, of the plant. I received the half- 
tone from the United States Agricultural Department, Washington, 
D. C. 

I should have a picture of sweet clover and plow turning it under. 
I went to Ohio last fall a year on the 16th of October, and did not 
get back till November 27th. When I left, I said to my oldest son, 
" Walter, I want you to plow down the sweet clover and take a photo 
of it." When I came back he said he had been so busy that he could 
not get it done. But, the truth of the matter was, he was sparking 
a girl all summer. If I did not get the photo, he got the girl. 



IMPROVING THE SOIL FROM ORGANIC, OR 
ANIMAL MATTER STANDPOINT 

MY grandfather came from Ireland years ago, married a man's 
daughter, with whom he got one hundred and ten acres of 
woodland. He cleared the land, erected buildings, and 
raised big crops because he could not help it. Some years after he 
got the farm, it did not produce crops as it did at first; and he began, 
as all other farmers in my part of Pennsylvania did, to sow Nova 
Scotia plaster. Everywhere they threw a handful of the plaster 
the land yielded a larger growth, and I used to sit on the top rail of 
the old worm fence, with my arm around my grandfather's neck, 
while he would pick out a certain spot in the clover field, or row of 
corn in the corn field, where the boys failed to put Nova Scotia plaster. 
Soon many plaster mills were built on the streams of Pennsylvania, 
and hundreds of boat- and car-loads of the plaster came up into the 
state. The day came when I carried the plaster bag on my shoulders 
and plastered the row of corn along the fence heavily, the next row 
a little lighter, and so on, until I would not put any on. This practice 
was continued, and the day came in Pennsylvania when you could 
not see where you put the plaster; and today the old plaster mills 
are known only on the pages of history. 

The farmers kept on cropping the land until it was not yielding 
so well as it had been, and they wanted to make it more productive. 
Therefore, they began, down in eastern Pennsylvania, to put up lime 
kilns, and continued to do so until they were as thick as flies around 
a sugar barrel on the fourth of July. Then they began to burn lime 
and to haul it out, until the state was a great white sheet. Every place 
they threw a shovelful of lime it made the earth richer and more 
productive; and, in my section, old men and their boys used to lean 
up against the old worm fence, and look over into the field where 
they had put on lime, and wonder what they would do with all the 
crops they were raising. Today the father is dead, and the boys are 
leaning up against the same old fence, looking over it into the field, 
and wondering what in thunder is the matter with the land; while 
the lime kilns are covered with moss and ivy, and birds are building 
their nests in them. In many places you could not get your board 
in exchange for spreading lime for them, and all because they have 
neglected the vegetable matter necessary for the soil. 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 29 

What have they done? They have used the lime which is as a 
key that unlocks the great store of plant food that is locked up in 
the soil, to make it available for plants. They have produced vege- 
tation; have taken it away; and have not given back to the soil any 
thing in return. You could not farm a field twenty years in succession 
with the use of lime alone. It is not the fault of the lime, but the 
fault of the man who did not take care of and handle rightly that 
which the lime gave him. 

The farmers kept on cropping the land, and, as it was not doing 
for them what it had done, they began down east again, and so came 
up through the state, using commercial fertilizers until, last year, 
the farmers in the state of Pennsylvania went down into their pockets 
and brought up eight million dollars and put them into commercial 
fertilizer. What for? To have some place to put their money? 
Not much! They did it to make the soil do what it had done for 
their grandfathers for nothing, and all because the decayed vegetable 
matter and humus had been worked out of the soil. 

We do not look at things as they do in some of the old countries. 
Think of about eighty-three dollars worth of plant food running 
out of most of the barn-yards of this country in one year, and barn- 
yard manure losing sixty per cent of its food value in one hundred 
and four days, by lying out in the open barn-yard ! 

I watched this go on, and the colored water run across the public 
road into the Juniata river, until I could stand it no longer; so I 
covered the barn-yard and puddled the bottom with yellow clay of 
both barn-yard and stables, in order to hold this liquid manure. 

I have cut the corn-stalks in my barn until I think it is a sin to 
feed whole corn-stalks. If I were given to profanity, I would go some- 
where to a place where they were feeding whole corn-stalks and clean 
out their stables for them and do my swearing there. I think the 
Lord would forgive me there quicker than in any other place. Never 
feed whole corn-stalks except just before a protracted meeting. 

THE WAY TO HANDLE BARN-YARD MANURE 

It is much easier to do work in a book, or when talking before 
an audience than out on the farm. If I could have my own way and 
do it, I would keep the stable manure under cover, — keep it from 
heating; and then in the spring, when the grass in my mowing field 
was three or four inches high, I would haul the manure all out in 
one day, and spread it evenly over the grass field. 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 31 

That night I would lie in bed and have a thunder shower come 
up and leach the fertility, or plant food, out of the manure down 
among the roots of the grass-roots that were alive and active, ready 
to take up this plant food. I would feel so much better than if it 
were put on bare ground, or plowed down. 

Think of my grandfather leaving the manure in the open barn- 
yard, to lose the sixty per cent of its food value, and then, when 
the spring work was done, hauling the remaining forty per cent 
out on the corn-stalk field (fallow field), pulling it off the wagon 
with that old, ugly, crooked-handled dung-hook that hung in the 
barn — that daylight robber that caused more mortgages to be put 
on farms than any other implement of its size in the world. 

There the manure would lie in piles until they went in to plow 
the field. After opening the land between the rows of manure piles, 
they would spread the manure, while the horses were resting, by 
throwing it around in chunks the size of my head, and plowing it 
down to the bottom of the furrow. So the forty per cent was doing 
no good, and did not produce a blade of any thing until something 
was sown in the field and the roots got down to the manure. 

There are some people doing this today. Stable manure is never 
better or more valuable than the day it is made; but, as we cannot 
always get on the fields, I covered my barn-yard. 

I want the stable manure on the grass because it is a nitrogenous 
food, and produces stalks, stems and leaves; and stalks, stems and 
leaves are hay and vegetable matter. When you plow down stable 
manure you wait a long time for it to put any thing back to the barn. 
When I put it on the grass in winter and early spring, I put hay in the 
barn, in June and July, that is produced by it. When the growing 
weather comes, it is not long until you can see the effects of the 
manure on the grass. One ton of manure on the grass is equal to 
two tons plowed down. 

Then after the plant food is leached out of the manure down 
about the roots of the grass, you have the organic matter left on the 
surface as a blanket to hold the moisture where you have the heat. 
Nature, with these two to disintegrate the soil, benefits its mechanical 
condition, and releases and makes available the locked-up plant food 
that the plant cannot otherwise get. The man does not live who can 
get this locked-up plant food in any other way but nature's way; and, 
when he does get it, it is nearer a balanced ration for the plant than 
any living man can put in a commercial fertilizer sack. Plants need 
this balanced ration just as much as do the cow, pig or chicken. 



32 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

You often hear a man say that he has a plot of land that is so 
rich that everything he sows on it lies down. You tell him to put on 
South Carolina rock (phosphoric acid). He will say, "What, put 
on more fertilizer, and everything lies down now." He does not 
seem to know that his land is not nearly so rich and fertile as that 
which raises from fifty to sixty bushels of wheat to the acre. His land 
is loaded with nitrogen, " lop-sided," unbalanced ration, and needs 
to be balanced up. 

A few years ago (the winter before my boys went from home 
to make their fortunes, — a project in which it took them twelve 
months to make up their minds to come back and put their feet under 
my table again), they hauled the manure on the mowing field. That 
spring Mr. Trimble came to crop my farm, and, when he saw the 
strawy manure on the mowing field, he came to me and said that he 
wanted to sell his share of the hay, and that no one would buy hay 
off of that field. I did not have a manure spreader at that time, and 
I said, " Never mind, Mr. Trimble, we will fix that. As soon as we 
get a shower to moisten the manure, I want you to hitch in the drag- 
harrow and harrow it." He did so, and the strawy manure would 
collect under the harrow and roll out in chunks the size of a half- 
barrel. When he was through, he came to me and said, " Seeds, it is 
worse than ever; no One will buy hay off of that field." I said, " Never 
mind, I will fix that." I got my little boy and another boy and we 
went out and shook the strawy part of the manure evenly over the 
field. The spring rains came and beat the strawy part of the manure 
down to the surface; the grass grew up through it, and the more it 
shaded the blanket the more it held the moisture; and the more it: 
held the moisture the more it made the grass grow. So it went on. 
I know that things grow bigger in books than on the farm, and I 
do not say that Mr. Trimble had to back the wagon into the field 
to get a start to haul the hay out; but I do say that he bragged about 
the hay he was taking off the field. He never hauled cleaner or nicer 
hay to market, and that, too, from a field that a few years before 
would raise nothing. The strawy blanket of which Mr. Trimble 
was so much afraid was all rotted, and the hay-rake teeth went through 
it, and he could not have raked it up if he had tried. 

The next year the boys came back, and, when they pulled the 
six-foot mower into the field to cut the second crop, I went up to 
Tyrone and brought the photographer down and had him take a 
picture of the mower cutting the second crop — on the old worn-out 
farm! 



HOW COD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 35 

Now, listen. This field was manured on the grass or surface; 
two big crops were taken off that they boasted about, and after the 
two crops were taken off it was a better field for corn than it was 
thirty days after the stable manure was put on; all on account of 
the blanket which held the moisture in the field when we had the 
heat. When you do not have the heat, it is of no use; you must have 
the two together, and the farmer who can devise means and ways 
of holding the moisture in his soil, when he has the heat, is master 
of the situation. Plant food becomes plentiful; the mechanical 
condition of the soil is improved, and one can plow in dry weather 
when another man can not. Simply nature's way. 

The picture of the mower cutting this crop of grass is shown 
in this book. 

I should like to have some one tell me how he can manure a 
field, then take off two big crops, and, after that, show that it is better 
for corn than it was just after being manured, or before the crops 
were taken off, — except in my way. 

Is that all? No, indeed. When the farmer holds the moisture 
in the soil, when he has the heat, the same as nature does, the little 
earthworms, or fishworms, the farmer's best friend, come up to the 
surface and work there; and when you see the little earth castings 
lying around, caused by these little creatures, you know that they 
are working for the farmer, disintegrating the soil, and releasing, 
unlocking, and making available some of that locked-up plant food 
that I have been speaking about. If you can not hold the moisture 
when you have the heat, the worms will not come to the surface to 
w r ork for you. 

Last week, February 4, 1908, in Montour county, Pa., a man 
in the meeting got up and said that when he began to manure his 
corn-field (for the next spring), in the months of August, September, 
October, November, and on through the winter and up to the time 
he began to plow the field in the spring, he had noticed that the part 
of the field manured first was more fertile and better than the part 
manured later. In other words, the longer the manure lay on the 
field, the better and richer it was. These little testimonials come up 
every now and then to back up my idea. If he had mowed the field 
and held it over to the next year, it would have been better still. 



THE LAWN 

THERE is nothing, to my mind, that finishes a home like a 
lawn. Many an old house, well kept, with a nice lawn around 
it, is the wayside magnet that seems to draw you from the 
public road and makes you feel as though you wanted to go in and 
stay awhile. It seems to be a place made especially by nature for 
the blooming of flowers, the singing of birds; a place where the sun 
shines differently from what it does elsewhere; and when the lawn 
is covered with morning dew, and is kissed by the morning sun, 
making it sparkle like millions of diamonds, you have a picture 
no artist can paint. 

You may spend thousands of dollars to build a home; yet, it 
might look like a jail when finished, and make the cold chills run up 
your back, and you would not stay there over night for fear of seeing 
things. 

The first step in making a lawn is to grade and prepare the sur- 
face to a good, fine seed bed, and it should be reasonably good soil; 
then you want good seed, not clover and timothy, but Kentucky 
blue grass, or regular lawn grass, and as clean as yon can get it. 
When sown on this prepared surface, brush or rake in with some 
fine-toothed implement, and after it is up, and when the ground is 
dry, if you have a roller, use it. 

After some people have a lawn, they think they are fixed for 
life, as far as a lawn is concerned; but the truth is that a lawn will 
wear out as well as a farmer's mowing field, and, when the grass 
begins to get thin, the weeds will begin to come in — nature's way. 
The weeds may grow at the beginning, because the seed was in the 
grass seed, or in the ground. Keep them from going to seed, and they 
must all disappear. 

Every two years, we ought to sow clean blue grass or lawn grass 
seed over our lawn. This keeps up the grass supply. 

You cannot have a lawn with too much shade. I prefer to mow 
often and leave the clippings on the lawn. It is the blanket, and 
vegetable matter, that will do the lawn good. Every few years I 
cover the lawn with barn-yard manure, in the fall. Let it lie there 
all winter, rake it off in the spring, and that which we rake off we put 
on the garden. This is a little trouble, but I want to say that I made 







-J. ££"■ 
- V, 






» - * ' WW) 


* 


, • * i^ 




1 

- ■ ' ■- : 
■•-;•• . '•■■* • 


"■ m 
■:■':■ ' w 

* - V 

--. 




■ ■ . ■ 

. ~J-' :■ ''**■'; ':':■■: 'U*' ■-''-' 




' / 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 



more money creating my lawn than I ever did taking a fat ox from 
the stall, or a bushel of potatoes from the cellar. 

A man will stand in the public road in front of my place, and 
give more for my property on account of my lawn; but money is 
not the only thing in the world. The lawn makes the boys and girls 
want to stay on the farm. It is on the lawn that we spend our spare 
moments on Sundays, entertaining our friends, in the summer; 
and there, beneath the shade of the old apple tree, the smoke curls 
more beautifully from my chimney than from any other I ever saw. 

The picture of "Bob" Seeds' back yard was on the front page 
of The National Stockman and Farmer some years ago. The camera 
was placed in the kitchen door when it was taken. 

I do not believe that the back of the barn or the back of the house 
is the place for rubbish piles. My back yard, or background of the 
lawn, consists of fifty grape-vines, and is one of the most profitable 
spots on my farm. It is astonishing how your friends drop in to see 
you when the grapes are ripe! We eat all we can, and make grape- 
butter and grape- juice, generally putting up from twenty to forty 
quarts of the latter. As I am often asked for the recipe, I will publish 
it in this book. 

GRAPE-JUICE 

Select choice, sound Concord grapes. If you buy them, use none 
that are broken or moldy. Pick them from the stems and wash. Place 
in a colander for the dirty water to drain off. Place in a white, enam- 
eled preserving kettle. To each ten pounds, or six quarts, of the 



Young Folks' Library of Choice Literature 

For children, costing seven cents each, ought to be in every 
home where there are small children, especially the booklets treating 
of history and nature study. 

Last week, January, 25, 1908, while I was at home, my little boy, 
Carl, eight years old, selected ten books of his own choice, and I 
was delighted to furnish the seventy cents for the post-office order 
to put in the little letter he wrote ordering the books of his own selec- 
tion, in his own name. They are better books than I could select 
and order for him. The books can be had from the Educational 
Publishing Company, 18 East ijth street, New York City. 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 



39 



stemmed grapes, add one quart of cold water. Place over the fire 
and boil hard for ten minutes, or until the pulp is thoroughly cooked 
and broken. While the grapes are cooking, frequently stir with a 
wooden spoon. Remove from the fire and express the juice through 
a cheese-cloth bag. Replace over the fire. Add a very scant half- 
pint of granulated sugar to each quart of juice. Remove any scum 
that arises. When the sugar is dissolved, and the liquid has reached 
the boiling point, strain through a cheese-cloth or jelly bag. Replace 
over the fire, to keep it very hot while bottling. Bottle, cork and seal. 
Use bottles that have been thoroughly cleansed with water as hot 
as can be safely used; they should be filled while warm. In using 
fruit jars instead of bottles, a large wooden spoon should be used; 
do not use an iron spoon. Do not allow grape-juice to remain in a 
tin vessel one minute. If the hot juice is strained into a crock, the 
crock should be previously thoroughly warmed, or moderately 
heated to prevent breaking. Keep in a cool place. When using, 
if too strong, dilute with water. 



People living in rural districts or 
small towns can have the pleasure 
of the city light by using the port- 
able acetylene lamp, manufactured 
by the Acetylene Lamp Company, 
50 University Place, New York 
City. 



40 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

Circular Letter Printed a Few Years Ago to Answer Questions 
HUNDRED SPRINGS FARM 

R. S. SEEDS, Proprietor 



Birmingham, P^ 



My dear sir: — I cannot find time to answer all the letters which 
come to me; hence this circular letter, which, I trust, will answer all 
your questions. 

You can get inoculating material from the Agricultural Depart- 
ment, Washington, D. C., for nothing, I understand; but, if you want 
inoculated soil from me, I will furnish the sacks, gather the soil 
from around the alfalfa roots, and ship it for $1.50 per bushel; cash 
with order. If ordered, should like to see it used alongside of Washing- 
ton inoculation. One bushel ought to inoculate one acre. A strip 
should be left without soil sown, to check up results. 

In seeding alfalfa, I plow in the fall, or early in spring, ground 
that is not naturally wet, good soil, and harrow occasionally until 
June, to kill weeds; then on good seed-bed, sow twenty pounds of 
good seed to the acre, and inoculate. Cover with weeder or brush, 
and roll when up and ground is dry. Clip with mower when plants 
are high enough. As a rule, you cannot expect much from alfalfa 
in Pennsylvania the first year; although time of sowing, the kind of 
soil and season, may change this assertion. 

For vegetable matter and humus, I used to sow one peck of crim- 
son clover and one and one-half pounds of cowhorn turnip seed 
mixed to the acre, in front of cultivator, last time working corn, 
plow down next May or June, before the vitality left the stock to 
mature the seed in the head, and put to wheat that fall. Since wanting 
corn-stalks for oats, I had been using four pounds of dwarf Essex 
rape and one and one-half pounds of cowhorn turnip seeds mixed 
to acre, and plowed down in fall or spring for oats. Some other plants 
may be better than the ones I am using. 

In regard to other plants, I have not been a howling success 



For bedroom or hall-light, where you do not want to read, the 
glow light, manufactured by the Glow Light Company, 73 Pearl 
street, Boston, Mass., is a soft light, not using much oil, and no chim- 
neys to clean. 



42 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

raising cowpeas, beans or vetches. I believe I did not have the 
proper bacteria. 

I have been buying my timothy, clover, alfalfa, rape, vetches, 
etc., from Henry Nungesser, 65 Pearl street, New York City. Cow- 
horn turnip seed you can get from any first-class seedsman. Can 
get catalogues from advertisements in columns of The National 
Stockman and Farmer, Pittsburg, Pa. 

In writing, always make name, post-office, and railroad station 
plain. 

I am away from home much of my time, and request this letter 
to be mailed to all inquirers along these lines. I am, 

Yours very truly, R. S. Seeds. 



QUESTIONS ASKED ME 

Q. Would you spread stable manure in winter? 

A. Yes, on hard, frozen ground, or snow, but not on ice. I have 
seen men pile it up in the field and one on of the coldest days watched 
it heat, melt the snow, and release the nitrogen. 

Q. Do you use lime? 

A. Yes, and put it on with the drill that puts on 1,000 pounds 
of air-slaked sifted lime to acre, as well as 150 pounds of fertilizer, 
and when it gives me vegetable matter I see that it gets a chance. 
In most cases, no man can farm a field twenty years in succession 
with the use of lime. (My drill was made and guaranteed by Missouri 
Drill, Genesee Valley Manufacturing Company, Mt. Morris, N. Y.) 

Q. What did you use to get the start? 

A. Commercial fertilizer. It is a godsend to the man who has 
to use it;. but no farmer ought to be in a position where he is compelled 
to use it. 

Q. For what purpose do you sell your soil? 

A. For the alfalfa bacteria in it, or for inoculating other soils, 
as the chemist and scientific man has decided. 

Q. How do you mix the whitewash you use? 

A. When I am in a hurry, I slake the lime with hot water, keep- 
ing it covered from the air during the slaking, and put on water 
until it settles down to a paste; mix with hot water when applying. 
WHien I have time, I use the government recipe. 



HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 4r>, 



CEMENT WASH 

(United States Government Recipe) 

The wash used by the United States Government for the light- 
houses and beacons, chosen for permanence under the most extreme 
exposure to the weather. Fresh hydraulic cement of any good stan- 
dard kind, three parts, and clean, fine sand, one part, are mixed 
well with cold water and immediately applied. This gives a light 
brownish white, that is not so glaring as the common lime, and has 
been found to resist moisture better than any other wash. It adheres 
to brick or stone or wooden walls or fences very firmly. In its appli- 
cation, the walls are first wet with water, by which the adhesion 
of the wash is made stronger than if applied to a dry surface. 

LIME WASH 

A good wash is made in this way: Half a bushel of good, fresh 
lime is slaked with boiling water, and kept covered from the air 
during the slaking, to prevent weakening of the lime by the carbonic 
acid of the air. It is strained through a fine sieve or cloth, and seven 
pounds of salt are added. Three pounds of rice flour boiled to a thin 
paste, half a pound of Spanish white, and one pound of broken glue 
steeped in cold water and then dissolved in hot water are then added. 
When well mixed by stirring, five gallons of hot water are mixed in 
and the whole again stirred. This is kept a few days closely covered, 
when it is ready for use. It is applied hot, being kept in a kettle 
over a fire. This may be colored a light brown by burnt umber or 
a cream-yellow by yellow ochre. A light gray is made by adding 
a small quantity of lamp-black, previously mixed with water and 
thoroughly stirred. One pint of this wash covers a square yard. 

ANOTHER WASH FOR FENCES AND BARNS 
(This wash will last for five years.) 

A half-bushel of fresh lime is slaked and strained, and three 
pounds of hydraulic cement are added, with water sufficient to reduce 
it to a proper liquid condition. Ten pounds of burnt umber and one 
pound of Venetian red are well mixed, dry; four ounces of lamp- 
black, killed with sufficient vinegar, are then mixed with water and 



44 HOW GOD MADE THE SOIL FERTILE 

added to the other materials. The whole is diluted to make a barrel 
of thirty gallons. It must stand a few days and be frequently stirred 
before using. 

A wash for inside work that will not rub off is made of one pailful 
of common lime-wash, to which is added a thin paste made of a half 
pint of flour and boiling water. 

Whitewash, even though faded, adds much to a property, and 
increases it in value. I find boys who are anxious for the job at fifty 
cents per day and board themselves, and it is amazing how they 
change the looks of things in ten days. As scarce as help is, a person 
must be careful what he advises men to do on the farm. 



My mother always taught me that where there was a will there 
was a way, and it seems to me I am always facing things I can not do, — 
but I get them done somehow. My oldest son, who has been managing 
my farm the last two years, is going to a 700-acre lumber job with his 
brother, and dad is going to have his farm on his hands again. Imag- 
ine dad farming and talking at public gatherings eight months in 
the year! But I take courage from the motto that hangs in my home: 



"31 am an olb man anb 

fjabe fjab manp trouble*, tiut most of tfjem 

neber fjappeneb" 



I have tried to write this book as I talked the soil before the people 
last summer at many of the Chautauquas. I could have sold hun- 
dreds of books on the soil, but did not have them; hence the putting 
of my soil talk in book form. 

People blame me for being the biggest story-teller on the American 
platform; perhaps it is because I am Irish. I have kept the stories and 
frills out of the book, for fear some one may read it who does not 
know "Bob Seeds." 




yrom National Stockman and Farmer, of Pittsburg, Pa., Christtnas Number, 1904 

The point of the joke. Bob Seeds adorns his remarks to Professor McDowell and 
Professor Butz with a story. 




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